An Engineering Wunderkind's Ocean Plastics Cleanup Device Hits A Setback
Four months into its testing phase, the Ocean Cleanup's plastic-catching device isn't catching as much plastic as intended.
The path to innovation is not always a smooth, straight line. In some cases, it's U-shaped.
In September, a 2,000-foot-long floating barrier, shaped like a U, was dispatched to the Great Pacific garbage patch between Hawaii and California, where roughly 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic have formed a floating field of debris roughly twice the size of Texas. Made of connected plastic pipes, the barrier was meant to catch and clean-up the plastic.
Invented by Boyan Slat when he was just 17, of what it was designed to accomplish. It travels with wind and wave propulsion, like a U-shaped Pac-Man hungry for plastic. It orients itself in the wind and it catches and concentrates plastic, .
